Sounds like a "click here to skill up" system to me.

I think the debacle with Darkfall's "use it to improve it" system will make a lot of developers shy away from an interactive system for a while.

Atanas already commented skill system of ER in the old video on mmorpg.com
You gain combat SP through killing mobs and doing quests. Then you can buy Abilities by SP. You can upgrade Abilities by SP to unlock slots. You can buy Tactics by SP to improve Abilities by combining them and Tactics.
I see there is no any sort of skill improving, but only combining Abilities with Tactics.

p.s. "Skill" in ER = "Ability tree"

I think Massively's GDC article and mmorpg.com's GDC videos are pretty clear on the subject. Abilities have three levels, the second and third levels are purchased separately from the abilitiy. Each level provides another tactic slot for the ability.

Which is a shame, since in UO it worked extremely well 

I don't think that could be possible ;S . Maybe we haven't understood right,maybe the points are ONLY for the skill you're leveling and they are used to buy abilities FOR that skill...

I'm confused too.

So no matter what your crafting or wielding when you get a point, you can put those points into anything in their respective pools. Makes it a little easier to level up secondary skills since you're primary skills can still net you points to raise the secondary.

Ya good point impolite, but I'm not 100% positive on how BR is calculated. I believe that massively.com explained it as total skills increased BR so even if your using your "secondary" weapon which is trained to a lower skill, your BR contribution from your skill level is the same. In otherwords, it appears that the contribution based on skills is static and doesn't depend on the items equiped. The items themselves have their own BR contribution.

You could in theory find a really amazing melee weapon, which has a high BR contribution, higher than the ranged weapon you have equiped. So you could equip the melee weapon and have your BR increase even if your melee weapon skill is very low or non-existant.

Of course this system seems flawed. There's the possibility that BR is dependent on the equipment equiped and the associated skills. There is 1 sentence I found that could support this but its pretty vague:

Source: Massively Previews Earthrise

But they could mean presently skilled as in the sum total of all thats been learned to date. Hopefully they make the system more dynamic, maybe providing a weighting to the BR contribution of skills dependent on the items equiped.

I suspect it will likely be the other way around.  My impression is that BR will be determined first by the equipment you are using, then adjusted by the skills you possess related to that equipment.  It has been stated already that higher level characters can re-equip and effectively bring their BR way down to fight alongside new players for equivalent exp gains.  The only way I see this possible is if the BR system relies primarily on equipment and adjusts largely based on level of skill related to that equipment.

On the other subject, I really hope the main experience pools are indeed sub-divided into more specific exp classes.  A melee weapon should not grant you experience to increase your skill with a gun.  A gun should not be improving psychic powers or whatever.  The old SWG had this type of specific weapon experience system where, generally, you could only advance in the skill tree of the weapon being used to gain the exp.  They had a generic combat experience pool for non-weapon-specific advancement in combat skills, but that pool could not be used at all to advance skills in a specific weapon type.  And that, in my opinion, is how it should be. 

Blitz

*Edit*  - Doh!! In re-reading the thread, seems like Kole said that first paragraph already.  I suspect he are correct...